


For Love of a Child

by Lore55



Series: Counting Courtships [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Changelings, Curses, F/F, Happy Ending, Interspecies Relationship, Lesbian Character, Loss of children, Magic, Witchcraft, bi character, fae, spells, tylwyth teg - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8764762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lore55/pseuds/Lore55
Summary: Elle had lost her son. She had lost her husband. She had no expectation to find love again, least of all in a fairy who took her neighbors child and left another in its place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The second story in my 'Counting Courtships' series. The number theme here is three. 
> 
> I plan to update this story on Monday's and Fridays. 
> 
> For those who do not know, a tylwyth teg is a fae who replaced human children (usually blond ones) with changelings, for one reason or another.

Elle wasn't sure what drew her out that night. 

 

It could have been the pale face owl or the bawling of Montgomery’s calf. It might have been the soft paw pads of Reiley Hughes, a yellow cat that had walked the road for nearly twelve years now. 

 

Whatever the reason was, Elle emerged from her little house, tucked into a wool shawl that wrapped around her and her nightgown. A hole had grown, torn across the hem. She would ask Margaret to mend it for her later on, when it wasn’t the middle of the night. 

 

Her bared feet crossed the dying grass. Frost bit between her toes and a shiver ran through her spine. Winter was on its way. 

 

Small flowers that had once dotted the front of her house had fallen away already, their leaves shrivelling up and their petals kissing the ground before the wind caught then in a wild grasp. Seeds had sunk into the dark earth, prepared to bloom when spring came. 

 

Above her head she could see the blackness of the part of the moon veiled by the months never-ceasing-cycle. 

 

There was a light on in Mary and Henry Driscoll’s house. Or, perhaps not a light. 

 

Elle squinted, trying to make out what it was that she saw. There was certainly illumination, but it was not the soft yellow glow of a candle, or the warm red of hearth coals. It was too bright for that and too white for a candle. 

 

In fact, it looked almost like silver. 

 

A silver light that moved through the house, spreading from one window to the next until it had emerged from the back door, into the darkness of the half-moon.  

 

Elle’s breath caught, her ribs expanding to press on the cold gold that lay upon her breast bone.  

 

It was a woman. 

 

A woman with pale hair, light as the moon, and that was what was causing the glow. It seemed to capture all the light around her, sucking it out to make a dark halo before it cast that same light out once more into the world. 

 

The woman paused in her steps and Elle realized there was something in her arms. A bundle of pale white clothe, barely stark against the bare arms of the ethereal being. Her gown floated around her in a pale gauze, lighter than veils, lighter than air for it never brushed the ground. 

 

A pair of eyes, impossibly blue, shot right through her soul. 

 

Elle’s feet grew roots and her breath came to a total stop. That was the most beautfiul woman she had ever seen in the entirety of her life. Never had she been exposed to such an impossible appearance, never had she seen someone who had so little, who had no flaws at all. It was inhuman. 

 

Words of warning wrapped around her heart while a slight tilt of blue eyes wrapped a noose around her throat. 

 

Her mouth opened, words she could not think to say refusing to emerge beyond a squeak a mouse would be ashamed of. 

 

Then the creature  _ smiled _ , of all things. A knife thin tilt of the lips that revealed no teeth and cause no wrinkles, as though created by a sculptor who feared the truth of life that lay in flaws. 

 

The clothe shifted and a shock of gold hair flopped through the opening in it. 

 

Elle knew that hair. She knew the strange, unstoppable crimp in one strand, she knew the length that didn’t even pass the tip of ears. She knew the child bundled in the creature’s arms. 

 

It was Robin Driscoll. Wrapped up in a blanket and spirited away in the night. 

 

A scream bubbled in her throat and her eyes flashed to the windows, looking for a sign that his parents were aware of what was happening. 

 

No movement was seen inside of the house. 

 

Her eyes darted back to the ethereal woman who had turned from her, a slight lift to her chin, and began walking away. Elle’s warning fluttered and died in her teeth and her limbs moved without her say so, sending her after the woman that had stolen away Robin. 

 

Her feet brushed through the grass, growing colder and colder the farther she walked. It felt like a run and a crawl, moving too fast for her breath to catch but too slow for her to reach the woman who led her on invisible strings. 

 

The houses of her neighbors vanished behind her. The light that spilled ever out of tanner Richards house was left behind, plunging her into dark only half chased away by the half full moon and the impossible light of the woman she followed. 

 

Another light spilled in from her left, then the right. 

 

Her chin stayed facing totally forwards. Her breath was shallow and silence, so much so that she wondered if she was breathing at all.

 

Trees parted way, allowing her entrance to a gap of earth before a pool that glowed bright blue on the edges. The woman she had been following stopped at the edge and Elle drew a sharp breath. Two more, almost identical, joined her on either side. They all held a bundle with a gold hair and soft breathes. 

 

Gold haired children. Beautiful women spiriting them away into the night. 

 

The fair lady turned blue eyes to the human woman and that knife-thin smile returned. Elle almost choked. It was a terrible beauty that brought tears to her eyes and weakness to her knees. She felt limp but she was still standing. 

 

How was she still standing? 

 

The other women didn’t pay her any mind.  _ There are three _ , her mother’s voice hissed into her ear.  _ Three always. Mind the power of three, child, for three it strength beyond compare. _

 

Dawn, noon, dusk. Each woman moved, with hair pink as sunrise, the other with eyes that burned like the sun. And Elle’s turned from her, her moon-light hair shimmering in waves the lifts around her even when she took the first steps into the water. 

 

They sunk. There were no ripples, no splashes, nothing  _ natural  _ about the occurrence. 

 

As soon as they were gone Elle sunk, trembling, against a tree. The light vanished, leaving her in near darkness. The glow of the pool, the ethereal illumination of the woman she had seen, gone. 

 

The women pulled from the bark and stumbled on shaking legs, back to her home. She didn’t know how she didn’t get lost in the shadow’s crossroads. She didnt’ know how show found her way without guidaince but she did. 

 

Elle stumbled into her yard, which she did not remember being so close to the forest, past the time of sun up. Mary Driscoll was already outside, watching her son run wildly across the yard. 

 

Confusion, then understanding dawned. She dared not speak of the Tylwyth Teg, choosing instead to pick her way across her own yard until she could vanish into her home and sink into a chair.  


 

Blue eyes and impossible beauty haunted her mind.  

 

_ Away in the fields, in a vast mound of hay  _

_ Sleeping along, a boy he did lay  _

_ Slowly, slowly, drifting away _


End file.
